Who gets to pick what we watch? Tune in

Updated 10:00 pm, Thursday, May 5, 2005

Interesting, the whole concept of strange bedfellows. The term usually refers to disparate partners putting aside their differences and joining forces in the service of a common goal.

Occasionally, however, such bedsharing is more akin to an intrusion than a peaceful coupling. Examples of each popped up this week, brought to us by the Bush administration's growing desire to determine what you see on broadcast and, now, cable television.

Where are most Americans in all of this? Creeped out in the corner of the room and feebly saying, "No thanks, I'll just watch."

Given our widespread passivity, the fact that anyone is standing up for the purported 86 percent of Americans that TV Watch says favor parental responsibility over increasing the government's grip over prime-time content is worth some attention.

"There's no debate that some content is wrong for children," said Jim Dyke, TV Watch's executive director. "But there is a debate over who should decide what you can watch. ... Americans are clear in saying they want to be responsible for choosing what they watch on TV."

Parents Television Council's L. Brent Bozell predictably countered with this statement on his organization's Web site, www.parentstv.org "This supposed 'coalition' needs to be taken -- and dismissed -- for what it is: a collection of random citizen and public policy groups that have simply been hired and paid for by the networks to do their dirty work."

TV Watch grew from seed money provided by NBC Universal, Viacom (CBS) and News Corp (Fox). Coalition representatives would prefer we pay no attention to those giants behind the curtain, and have not revealed how much money they gave. (Notice: ABC's parent company Disney is not on the list.)

Still, it's just as interesting to note the individuals involved with TV Watch. Among the people lending his name is Buzzmachine.com's Jeff Jarvis, a former TV Guide critic and creator of Entertainment Weekly.

"Organizations like the Parents Television Council and the American Family Association come along and act like they're speaking for all parents," he said "Well, as an American parent, they're not. It's time for some of us to stand up and make that apparent."

Moreover, Jarvis says his aim and those of TV Watch members, is to preserve the integrity of the First Amendment, something he believes politicians are slow to do in the current climate, "because some would see that vote for the First Amendment, for free speech, as a vote for smut."

Of course, some people are going to question how a group like SpeakSpeak.org, a blogger site formed to battle right-wing influence over the media, can in good conscience bed down with The Media Institute, which has accepted sizable donations from controversial conservative Richard Mellon Scaife. Or how The Creative Coalition can join hands with Frank Luntz, the GOP pollster known for shaping doublespeak into administation talking points, who conducted TV Watch's poll alongside Peter D. Hart Research Associates.

Even if TV Watch's view is shared by millions who just want Bozell and his minions to leave their "Desperate Housewives" and "The Shield" well enough alone, the wildly divergent politics involved still makes one question the figures upon which the group is hanging its crusade.

This is not to say the organization's claim that almost 66 percent of Americans believe that the indecency dispute is actually depriving them of content they want to see is specious. Who isn't sick of the ruckus? And sure, 91 percent of Americans, when prompted correctly, probably will tell you that, to quote the survey, "the sensitivities of a few should not dictate the choices for everyone else."

Compare this data to recent numbers released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The Pew study found that 48 percent of Americans fear undue restrictions on the entertainment industry, versus the 41 percent who consider the industry's production of harmful content to be the true danger. Even so, 75 percent of respondents favor tighter enforcement of government rules on content airing while kids may be watching, saying they back the anti-decency proposals before Congress -- proposals that are in themselves bipartisan efforts.

At least TV Watch has the clout, and the money, to muscle into the debate. PBS doesn't have much of either to brace against the political tide some perceive to be threatening to change its content.

Tomlinson has been busy. The Times said he commissioned an audit of "Now With Bill Moyers" to investigate the program's liberal bias without informing CPB's board. His conclusion, not surprisingly, was that Moyers was overwhelmingly biased; ergo, based on one hour of programming a week, so is PBS as a whole.

Moyers' departure from "Now" in December is unrelated to this fracas. But Tomlinson did help line up millions to finance Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot's "The Journal Editorial Report."

The key question is how a politically and ideologically one-sided CPB board could affect PBS content. Indeed, CPB exists to insulate the tax dollars being used to fund public broadcasting from political influence. The situation brings to mind foxes guarding henhouses.

KCTS/9 general manager Randy Brinson said a handful of Seattle viewers have voiced their concerns to him. "We certainly want to be vigilant as an organization, to make sure that we're able to maintain our journalistic integrity, but we should always be doing that. That's not anything new," Brinson said, adding that he agrees with Tomlinson's view that PBS should incorporate diverse points of view, combined with responsible journalism and editorial integrity.

"Of course, reasonable people may disagree on the best way to achieve that diversity, and it would not be unusual for there to be conflict over those questions," he said in an e-mailed message.

But Brinson added that the public may be making more of this than is necessary: "We shouldn't say the sky is falling until it actually starts to fall."

Part of the reason the public isn't more alarmed may have to do with the incorrect notion that PBS is funded by Congress; therefore, we should not be upset to see it bend whichever way the political winds are blowing.

In reality, federal funds, which go through CPB to PBS, NPR and public television and radio stations, account for 15.3 percent of PBS's budget, according to statistics on www.cpb.org The largest chunk of funds, 26 percent, comes from viewers, with the rest from state and local government, corporate underwriting and universities.

To use language the CPB should understand, we majority shareholders should be the ones they should seek to serve, not whatever party's holds the reins at the moment.

They may seem to be very different, but broadcast television's face-off with the FCC and CPB's threats to PBS require the same remedy. Viewers have to get in on the action with the lights on and eyes open. It's going to get messy and ugly, but given the ferocious orgy between politics and media censorship, we don't have any alternative.